SpeakOut is Truthout's treasure chest for bloggy, quirky, personally reflective, or especially activism-focused pieces. SpeakOut articles represent the perspectives of their authors, and not those of Truthout.

The results of the Greek election are being systematically belittled by the notion that Syriza is just another product of Greek desperation. In European and American media, the radical Greek left is being treated similarly to the extreme right; like a chilly populist wind that hopefully will soon blow over. Never mind the fact that Syriza's party structure is populated by professors, community organizers and even resistance fighters who defended the country against the Nazis during the second world war, as opposed to the buffoonish thugs of The Golden Dawn. Never mind that the politics of austerity have confessedly failed, making the rise of Syriza a logical democratic occurrence rather than a desperate measure. Again we see democracy devalued when it leads to the "wrong" outcome. Or as David Cameron so diplomatically put it: "the election results in Greece will increase uncertainty."

Farmington, New Mexico—In what is one of the largest outpourings of its kind in New Mexico’s history, more than 10,000 citizens from around the US submitted comments this month against the proposed Piñon Pipeline. The response signals a growing national dissatisfaction with leasing our public lands for fossil fuel extraction, dissatisfaction with industrial development of our public lands, and with the related disruptions to health, wildlife, and the climate.

If built, the Piñon Pipeline would carry up to 50,000 barrels of oil daily across New Mexico’s Four Corners and Chaco Canyon region, threatening community safety, destroying cultural heritage and sacred sites, as well as pumping close to 8 million tons of carbon into our atmosphere every year, the equivalent of putting 1.5 million more passenger cars on the roads.

Whenever the word ‘refugee’ is uttered, I think of my mother. When Zionist militias began their systematic onslaught and ‘cleansing’ of the Palestinian Arab population of historic Palestine in 1948, she, along with her family, ran away from the once peaceful village of Beit Daras.

Back then, Zarefah was six. Her father died in a refugee camp in a tent provided by the Quakers soon after he had been separated from his land. She collected scrap metal to survive.

FAIR Act Would Eliminate Department of Justice Program that Enables State and Local Police to Keep Proceeds of Property Seized from Citizens

Momentum Builds in Congress for Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Days after Attorney General Holder Issues Policy Limiting Police Participation in Controversial Department of Justice Program

Bipartisan legislation was introduced in both houses of Congress today that would roll back changes made in the 1980s by Congress to federal civil asset forfeiture laws largely intended to incentivize law enforcement to pursue civil asset forfeitures as part of the rapid escalation of the war on drugs. In the Senate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Angus King (I-ME) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act. In the House, Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-CA), Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) introduced an identical version of Sen. Paul’s FAIR Act.

Shortly after the 2014 mid-term election, Fred Wertheimer, President of the reform group, Democracy 21, wrote in his Huffington Post article, "A Call to Arms", that "In 1789, the Founding Fathers created a constitutional system of government by the People. In 2010, five Supreme Court Justices – Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas and Alito – changed it to a constitutional system of government by millionaires, billionaires and corporations." Wertheimer's article portrays a new system where the systemic corruption of elections has been defined away so that the corporate CEOs and the plutocratic few who fund elections exercise so much influence that they, not the people, rule. Referring to the congressional elections he wrote:

Never has so much money from so few people been so pervasive in our congressional elections. Never has so much money in huge contributions, corporate funds and secret donations flooded our congressional elections and created so much opportunity for buying and selling. Never has the foundational principle of one person one vote been so undermined by a Supreme Court majority that apparently believes money is king.

The state of the juvenile correction system in America is dreadfully lacking in effectiveness and is increasing in population year-over-year. The US has the highest youth incarceration rate in the world with 336 juvenile incarcerations per 100,000 youth – nearly five times as many as the second highest country.

If you were to believe the tabloid hype around Davos you might be forgiven for thinking it’s a giant party where elite business types meet celebrities and dole out a few quid to the less fortunate of the world while cheering their good fortune. There is another side, and there is genuine value for science and scientists in the middle of this icy melting pot.

As a busy academic working on the oceans I had been peripherally aware of Davos but had never really engaged with the World Economic Forum (WEF). Like me, many environmental scientists have experienced the financial world only through the squeeze on national science budgets as a result of the global economic crisis. However, to be asked to attend the WEF on the behalf of the University of Oxford was an honour, although for many of us this is a demanding time of year in terms of teaching, dealing with graduate applications, writing references … you get the picture. So the question is, was it worth it?

Former Army Ranger Rory Fanning has a thoughtful article at TomDispatch.com on why young men should not join the Army to fight the war on terror in distant lands.

Here’s an excerpt:

Believe me, it [the Afghan War] was ugly. We were often enough targeting innocent people based on bad intelligence and in some cases even seizing Afghans who had actually pledged allegiance to the US mission… I know now that if our country’s leadership had truly had peace on its mind, it could have all been over in Afghanistan in early 2002.

A quarter century after the end of the Cold War and decades after the signing of landmark nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements, are the US and Russian governments once more engaged in a potentially disastrous nuclear arms race with one another? It certainly looks like it.

With approximately 15,000 nuclear weapons between them, the United States and Russia already possess about 93 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal, thus making them the world’s nuclear hegemons. But, apparently, like great powers throughout history, they do not consider their vast military might sufficient, especially in the context of their growing international rivalry.

SpeakOut is Truthout's treasure chest for bloggy, quirky, personally reflective, or especially activism-focused pieces. SpeakOut articles represent the perspectives of their authors, and not those of Truthout.

The results of the Greek election are being systematically belittled by the notion that Syriza is just another product of Greek desperation. In European and American media, the radical Greek left is being treated similarly to the extreme right; like a chilly populist wind that hopefully will soon blow over. Never mind the fact that Syriza's party structure is populated by professors, community organizers and even resistance fighters who defended the country against the Nazis during the second world war, as opposed to the buffoonish thugs of The Golden Dawn. Never mind that the politics of austerity have confessedly failed, making the rise of Syriza a logical democratic occurrence rather than a desperate measure. Again we see democracy devalued when it leads to the "wrong" outcome. Or as David Cameron so diplomatically put it: "the election results in Greece will increase uncertainty."

Farmington, New Mexico—In what is one of the largest outpourings of its kind in New Mexico’s history, more than 10,000 citizens from around the US submitted comments this month against the proposed Piñon Pipeline. The response signals a growing national dissatisfaction with leasing our public lands for fossil fuel extraction, dissatisfaction with industrial development of our public lands, and with the related disruptions to health, wildlife, and the climate.

If built, the Piñon Pipeline would carry up to 50,000 barrels of oil daily across New Mexico’s Four Corners and Chaco Canyon region, threatening community safety, destroying cultural heritage and sacred sites, as well as pumping close to 8 million tons of carbon into our atmosphere every year, the equivalent of putting 1.5 million more passenger cars on the roads.

Whenever the word ‘refugee’ is uttered, I think of my mother. When Zionist militias began their systematic onslaught and ‘cleansing’ of the Palestinian Arab population of historic Palestine in 1948, she, along with her family, ran away from the once peaceful village of Beit Daras.

Back then, Zarefah was six. Her father died in a refugee camp in a tent provided by the Quakers soon after he had been separated from his land. She collected scrap metal to survive.

FAIR Act Would Eliminate Department of Justice Program that Enables State and Local Police to Keep Proceeds of Property Seized from Citizens

Momentum Builds in Congress for Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Days after Attorney General Holder Issues Policy Limiting Police Participation in Controversial Department of Justice Program

Bipartisan legislation was introduced in both houses of Congress today that would roll back changes made in the 1980s by Congress to federal civil asset forfeiture laws largely intended to incentivize law enforcement to pursue civil asset forfeitures as part of the rapid escalation of the war on drugs. In the Senate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Angus King (I-ME) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act. In the House, Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-CA), Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) introduced an identical version of Sen. Paul’s FAIR Act.

Shortly after the 2014 mid-term election, Fred Wertheimer, President of the reform group, Democracy 21, wrote in his Huffington Post article, "A Call to Arms", that "In 1789, the Founding Fathers created a constitutional system of government by the People. In 2010, five Supreme Court Justices – Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas and Alito – changed it to a constitutional system of government by millionaires, billionaires and corporations." Wertheimer's article portrays a new system where the systemic corruption of elections has been defined away so that the corporate CEOs and the plutocratic few who fund elections exercise so much influence that they, not the people, rule. Referring to the congressional elections he wrote:

Never has so much money from so few people been so pervasive in our congressional elections. Never has so much money in huge contributions, corporate funds and secret donations flooded our congressional elections and created so much opportunity for buying and selling. Never has the foundational principle of one person one vote been so undermined by a Supreme Court majority that apparently believes money is king.

The state of the juvenile correction system in America is dreadfully lacking in effectiveness and is increasing in population year-over-year. The US has the highest youth incarceration rate in the world with 336 juvenile incarcerations per 100,000 youth – nearly five times as many as the second highest country.

If you were to believe the tabloid hype around Davos you might be forgiven for thinking it’s a giant party where elite business types meet celebrities and dole out a few quid to the less fortunate of the world while cheering their good fortune. There is another side, and there is genuine value for science and scientists in the middle of this icy melting pot.

As a busy academic working on the oceans I had been peripherally aware of Davos but had never really engaged with the World Economic Forum (WEF). Like me, many environmental scientists have experienced the financial world only through the squeeze on national science budgets as a result of the global economic crisis. However, to be asked to attend the WEF on the behalf of the University of Oxford was an honour, although for many of us this is a demanding time of year in terms of teaching, dealing with graduate applications, writing references … you get the picture. So the question is, was it worth it?

Former Army Ranger Rory Fanning has a thoughtful article at TomDispatch.com on why young men should not join the Army to fight the war on terror in distant lands.

Here’s an excerpt:

Believe me, it [the Afghan War] was ugly. We were often enough targeting innocent people based on bad intelligence and in some cases even seizing Afghans who had actually pledged allegiance to the US mission… I know now that if our country’s leadership had truly had peace on its mind, it could have all been over in Afghanistan in early 2002.

A quarter century after the end of the Cold War and decades after the signing of landmark nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements, are the US and Russian governments once more engaged in a potentially disastrous nuclear arms race with one another? It certainly looks like it.

With approximately 15,000 nuclear weapons between them, the United States and Russia already possess about 93 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal, thus making them the world’s nuclear hegemons. But, apparently, like great powers throughout history, they do not consider their vast military might sufficient, especially in the context of their growing international rivalry.